Smoking, Drinking and School Dropout among Adolescents in the Philippines

Michelle Hindin, Johns Hopkins University

I explore the relationship between three problem behaviors–smoking, drinking, and school dropout in a cohort of nearly 2,000 adolescents in Cebu, Philippines. With longitudinal data, I assess whether problem behaviors cluster and whether smoking and drinking predicts future school dropout. Both girls and boys who report that a close friend drinks alcohol are over 7 times as likely to report continuing to drink alcohol (beyond experimentation), even after controlling for other problem behaviors. For boys, their own smoking and drinking behaviors during the 1998 survey significantly predict school dropout by 2001. For girls, own smoking and drinking behavior does not predict school dropout, but the smoking behavior of their friends in the 1998 survey predicts school dropout by 2001. For both boys and girls, it is clear that smoking and drinking behaviors are an not only an important concern for schooling outcomes but a concern for their future health.